In any community association budget, capital projects such as roofs and balconies are the scariest. They are the most expensive and require the most expertise to get right. That’s why boards must carefully tread each step of the way.

Wrong turns can result in unnecessary spending, higher assessments and owner unrest. Before you launch your next big-ticket endeavor, consider these strategies for controlling the dollars.

Keep your reserve study current. A reserve study is an excellent guide to when common elements are due for replacement and the approximate cost. It needs to be updated regularly, so you’re working with today’s conditions. Some common elements might be functioning just fine when the reserve study says their time is up. Or a previous board, now long gone, may have done preventive maintenance to extend the life span of a common element, and no one is around who remembers.

Many industry pros, including Brian Butler, vice president of property management at FirstService Residential in Chicago, recommend updates every three to five years.

“You don’t want to do anything prematurely or spend money before you have to,” he said.

Seek expert help. Don’t attempt to manage a major project on your own. Put together a team that might include a consultant, engineer, architect and project manager. An attorney should review your contract.

“The use of professionals helps protect you as a board member from liability of not doing your proper due diligence,” Butler said. “In event of a lawsuit, you can say, ‘We did the right thing. We did our homework.’”

Look for logical sequences. Sometimes it makes sense to do projects at the same time rather than spread them out. For example, mobilization costs like setting up and taking down scaffolds are pricey. Rather than doing tuck-pointing one year and window replacement the next, schedule them together and pay for the scaffolding once.

One-third of capital projects incur mobilization costs, estimated Peter Power, an architect and principal at Klein & Hoffman, an architectural and structural engineering company in Chicago and Philadelphia. Depending on the size of the building, they can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ask for outside opinions. Fresh eyes can be beneficial. After you have your construction drawings and documents, take them to another engineer or architect for review, Power recommends.

“Quite often, they are in agreement, but sometimes they are not,” he said. “If there are discrepancies, find out why. There might be different ways of approaching the project, and you may find a less expensive way of doing it.”

When interviewing contractors for the job, ask them for their input and creativity, he said.

“As engineers, we are going to specify what it looks like in its completed state,” he said. “We are not going to say how it gets to that point. The contractor might have great ideas about how to most effectively meet your needs.”

Get competitive bids. Require prospective contractors to itemize their bids into categories like materials, labor and insurance, Butler said.

“Having a lump sum doesn’t allow you to compare one bid to another,” he said. “You don’t want to give away numbers, but you can say to a contractor, ‘This line item seems excessive,’ or they could be incredibly low, and that’s a red flag.”

Plan for the unknown. Rarely does a project go exactly as planned — or priced. When contractors start tearing off roofs or breaking down walls, they may discover surprises like water damage or rotted wood that have to be remedied before they can proceed.

How much money to budget for contingencies? There’s no rule of thumb. It depends on the project, but it could range from 2 to 20 percent of the total cost.

The figure “only looks large until you have an unforeseen condition you have to address,” Butler said. “Then you are grateful for having it.”